A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly’s wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

“[Gaiman’s] mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown.” New York Times Book Review

My Review

I was excited to join this blog tour because I’ve been wanting to read some of Neil Gaiman’s books but I haven’t had time. This way, I had to read one! I wasn’t disappointed.

The narrator is a middle-aged man who has come home to attend a funeral and he finds himself sitting on a bench next to a pond on a farm near his old home. Sitting there, he remembers Lettie and her mom and grandmother who lived there, as well as some strange things that happened when he was seven years old. I wondered how he could have forgotten so much, but it all made sense eventually.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fantasy that occurs right at home. It’s from the view of a seven-year-old so there are things that occur that don’t phase him because he’s still innocent. But my jaw dropped at least once and it took me a minute to realize why he wasn’t concerned.

Full of friendship, sadness, and magic, this is a book for readers of all ages. I think the age of the reader will be important on how the book is viewed but I’m sure it’s one that everyone will enjoy.

About the Author

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the story collections Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning. He is the winner of numerous literary honors, including the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States. He is Professor in the Arts at Bard College.